


My Sorrow's Fine

by shakespearespaz



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arranged Marriage, Character Death, F/M, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-10
Updated: 2013-07-10
Packaged: 2017-12-18 07:53:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/877419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shakespearespaz/pseuds/shakespearespaz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neville marries Rachel under President Foster's orders and the two do the best they can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Sorrow's Fine

Neither had enough family left to constitute a crowd for the ceremony.

A somber thunderstorm rolled in over the city and the two waited for a funeral dirge of downpour to accompany the wedding. They were each tallying the deaths on their side—Julia, Ben, Danny—and the simple absences—Miles, Charlie, Jason.

Neville knew how to be selective about which orders he followed, but he’d meant to obey Foster’s word on this one. She’d arranged for him to marry Rachel; Miles’ brother’s widow Foster had called her, as if the loyal servant before her hadn't done his own part in torturing the woman. He also didn’t point out to her that Rachel had never been anyone’s widow. It was old thinking, from the days of linking powerful families through marriage, tying one vast plantation to another, and in some distant way Foster imagined that it brought the two tighter into her web.

Rachel had been dragged in by a bounty hunter, found wandering the plains and figured to be worth a pretty penny to rivaling nations, and Neville had lost Julia to the last plague that ripped through the south. 

They stood stiffly, arms reaching across the void between them to swear eternity in hollow voices.

“Hawaii sound good for a honeymoon?” he couldn’t help but quip with a mean smile as they retreated from the altar.

“I hate you,” was her only response in the same empty tone.

The President gave them a home on the edge of the city, drawing Neville into her closest circles. As the man gathered allies, she missed the rebellion as it fermented right under her nose.

Rachel was important too, but Foster had only meant to keep her safe and hidden until the time was right. Trapped in another cage, Rachel spun her wheels during the day in a makeshift lab, tinkering away at menial projects, and spent nights in her grim, fake home.

Neville knew she would try to escape.

After all, his ambitious tendencies were only him trying to escape too, tired of being made to dance for idiots. In some ways, they were cut from the same cloth.  

As his men stormed the President’s compound, screams and gunfire throwing the city into confusion, he led a unit to the northern gate, in time to drag his wife back home through the dusty chaos.

“You should have let me go. You could’ve said I died in the coup and we’d both be happier.”

She sat defiant on the couch in their unlived in living room as heavy boots searched the house.

“Mrs. Matheson, you would’ve probably gotten yourself shot.”

He still called her Mrs. Matheson; Mrs. Neville was gone and the woman Tom lived with would never replace her. Calling her Rachel was too intimate.

“Then I’d be dead and we both would still be happier.”

“You don’t have anyone else to watch out for you. You’re still of use to me and the Federation. You’re staying alive.”

“I’m going to get back to my daughter, Tom.”

Tom was a warning. He laughed.

“You daughter has disowned you. You know that or you would’ve been running through those gates ages ago.”

She held her breath and her brow furrowed a microscopic amount, a sign he had learned was her mask to conceal an oncoming flood of emotions.

“Sometimes we have to let family go,” he continued, "Some are ripped away from us. But some forfeit their place.”

“I hate you.”

She tore out of the room and upstairs and he heard her bark at the men roaming the house to get out. A door slam was followed by the clatter of anxious boots on the stairs.

Neville led the same old regime, the only difference being that he was in charge.

Rachel stayed put and squirmed little. He watched her grow impatient, though, and he suggested the most ridiculous remedy one night at dinner.

“We could have kids.”

Her head jerked up and her mouth stayed open for a moment.

“You haven’t touched me.”

It was a natural first reaction, and she was right. Neville had taken care of himself, partially out of pity for Rachel and what she had been through and partially not to desecrate what memories he had left of Julia. Just sex would have been fine, but he could get that in the city easily, and however unbalanced their situation, he considered himself to have more respect for his wife than using her like a whore. 

He ended the conversation after that. What he’d meant was Danny. Danny was the son she never got to have. He wanted the boy back; in him Neville had seen the malleable son Jason had never been.

If Danny was there maybe their twisted lives would mean more.

She’d been at the market, the private had told him. Such a string of words was still foreign to him, as was the thought of the brilliant, broken mad scientist shopping for apples and oranges and tomatoes. Everyone knew who she was, what she had done, and the staring and whispering was normal.

The rocks, however, weren’t.

He found the fruit spilled across the table, her at the table and a nasty bruise and scratch painting her cheek. Neville stopped in the doorway.

“Next time you’re taking an escort.”

“Why haven’t you had me murdered yet?”

She knew how to surprise him, he had to give her that.

“Your brain is still worth something, no matter how little of it is left. Now, go clean up.”

“Why hasn’t Miles tried to find me?”

That one wasn’t hard.

“Because he’s a self-serving ass.”

She laughed, loud and honest.

“That he is.” And then, quieter: “Aren’t we all…”

“As much I love this mid-life crisis you’re having, you need to treat that injury.”

She nodded absently and didn’t move. He took a step towards her and her eyes flicked up to him, daring him to come closer.

“I think Susan is in the back. She can help you,” he finished, retreating upstairs.

The Georgia Federation swallowed the Monroe Republic whole and moved onto Texas. Rachel never saw her daughter again.

Around year five, Rachel started an affair with one of the servants, until he disappeared in the middle of the night. She figured Neville had found out and either kicked the young man to the curb or slit his throat, but he never spoke to her about it. She figured that was the best way for it to end.

Neville survived no less than three assassination attempts. Rachel was included in the second and Neville had watched her smash an antique wash bowl into the intruder’s head in a blind panic. The man had bled to death in the middle of their bedroom as she stood frozen in the corner, hands bleeding from broken bits of ceramic. They’d moved after that.

Rachel had lost count of the years when a man pounded on their door in the middle of the night. He held a small box and their guard let him in. The two wandered down in their silk robes, Neville infuriated and Rachel still hazy. The stranger had come from California, where he’d been privately hired to deliver the package all the way to Atlanta.

He pressed something small into Neville’s hand. He held it up to the dim oil lamps and Rachel recognized it as Miles’ medallion.

As proof that he was telling the truth, the man insisted.

Inside the box were the cremated remains of Charlie Matheson and Jason Neville, sent by Miles Matheson.

They were either still dreaming or the man was lying as he told them that the two young lovers had been killed in a skirmish between Texas and California. Miles wanted them to know that Jason had been shot as he raced idiotically across the battlefield to a fallen Charlie. Idiotically was Miles’ word, the messenger insisted.

Neville watched Rachel lose it. Her face scrunched up, shadowy in the warm light and she fought the tears choking at her. The box sitting ominously on that coffee table remained untouched. She darted after the man as he turned to leave, asking if Miles had said anything else.

“Only that you deserve her, ma’am,” he replied.

Neville nodded solemnly.

“We’ll give them a proper burial in the morning, Rachel.”

Back in bed, he listened for her breaths to grow shallow in the dark next to him, but they never did. They both lay awake until dawn.

She found him after the funeral, slumped in his office chair swirling golden liquid around the tumbler in his hand.

“Jason was always a romantic fool,” he announced to her as he heard her enter the room.

“So was Charlie. It didn’t mean I loved her less.” Anguish teased at her voice and he had to remind himself that a tortured woman lived beneath her cold, steady face.

He turned to look at her.

“It’s not meant to be this way, Rachel. It’s the wrong order of things, for parents to outlive their children.”

“At least we can agree on something.”

They sat in silence, the sun shifting through the room. Some of the setting rays caught Rachel’s hair, a fiery glow weaving around her head. In her slim black dress she looked aged but beautiful. The first time Neville had seen her she was filthy and emaciated, huddling terrified in a windowless cell.

That woman had been more whole than the one sitting before him.

“You can go, Rachel.”

He wasn’t sure where it had come from, when he had gone from being her enemy to husband to captor, but here they were. He would free her now.

“No.”

She did not mention that she had nowhere to go, no one to seek out.

“Do you hate me?” he asked.

“Yes,” she breathed.

The streaks down her cheeks glistened as she shook her head.

Neither moved or spoke until the sun dipped below the horizon and the stars began to poke through the black of night.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not one hundred percent sure what this is. It was more of a challenge to myself to see if I could make this work and these two could have some really compelling scenes together. Still don’t think I did an adequate job explaining why they didn’t kill each other in the middle of the night though. AU isn't very exact, just wanted certain people in certain places. Also, Neville's voice is hard to pin down...


End file.
